Muslim brothers put NFL on hold, travel to Mecca

Put simply, this is just another striving, improbable, poetic American Dream story: How a family, venerating work and education, traveled from South Central LA to settle in Spielberg Americana in the shadow of the soaring San Bernardino Mountains—a family with not one but two brothers recruited to play Division I football at Washington State University, followed even more notably by NFL careers.

But this story has taken many more remarkable turns. Thursday on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams, correspondent Mary Carillo told the story of Husain and Hamza Abdullah, who, at their athletic peak … associated with America’s most glamorous, most popular sport … walked away, for the glory of God.

“We’ve been playing football since we were 8 years old,” Husain Abdullah told Carillo, “from Pop Warner to high school, and to college, and into the NFL. And although we’re knocking down all these barriers, doing things that people said you can’t do, all of a sudden, it was like there’s more to life than this. There’s more. And we had to go for it.”

Put simply, this is just another striving, improbable, poetic American Dream story: How a family, venerating work and education, traveled from South Central LA to settle in Spielberg Americana in the shadow of the soaring San Bernardino Mountains—a family with not one but two brothers recruited to play Division I football at Washington State University, followed even more notably by NFL careers.

But this story has taken many more remarkable turns. Thursday on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams, correspondent Mary Carillo told the story of Husain and Hamza Abdullah, who, at their athletic peak … associated with America’s most glamorous, most popular sport … walked away, for the glory of God.

“We’ve been playing football since we were 8 years old,” Husain Abdullah told Carillo, “from Pop Warner to high school, and to college, and into the NFL. And although we’re knocking down all these barriers, doing things that people said you can’t do, all of a sudden, it was like there’s more to life than this. There’s more. And we had to go for it.”